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rnage after an explosion in Southeast Turkey. At least eight people dead and more than a hundred injured.

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e car bomb blast struck near a police station in Diyarbakir. Officials blaming it on Kurdish PKK militants. The attack came just hours after a crackdown on the country's main pro-Kurdish party.

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lice arresting about a dozen MPs from the People's Democratic Party also known as HDP including its joint leaders. Reuters Ayla Jean Yackley is in Istanbul.>> And the official reason given for their arrest was that they had refused police summons to give testimony in cases that were opened up earlier this year.

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The government says these parliamentarians are encouraging terrorism and they are mixing with terrorists. President Tayyip Erdogan has said he's determined to, quote, dry the swamp of the insurgency, and he links these MPs to that effort.>>

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> The HDP, which won more that five million votes in the last election, denies any links to the PKK group.

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It says the arrests are politically motivated and an attempt to provoke civil war. The EU immediately condemning the move, calling it extremely worrying.>> There seems to be a general unease with Turkey's steps towards both journalism as well as to the political opposition. But it doesn't really go much further than rhetoric, and the rhetoric doesn't get much more severe than terms like worrying or cause for concern.

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The US, because of its fight in Iraq and in Syria against Islamic State, and the EU because of the migrant crisis both see Turkey as an essential partner that they must work with.>> Turkish politicians are usually exempt from prosecution, but the pro-Kurdish party's immunity was scrapped earlier this year.

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They fear more of them could now be rounded up to join their leaders behind bars.